


A Modern Fairy Tale

by Kanana



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:55:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23932660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanana/pseuds/Kanana
Summary: What is it that makes a person a parent? Is a parent the person who cares for you? Or the person who participated in your birth?





	A Modern Fairy Tale

Perhaps the things that happened could have only happened to me. I do not know. I have never heard of them happening to anyone else, but then again, my experience with others has been limited, to say the least. I grew up in a lonely cabin in the Rocky Mountains. We were far enough away from everyone that it took father all day to go to the closest town to get supplies. He would leave before the sun peeped over the mountains and when he returned it was long past sunset. I imagine that if I had chosen to go with him, I might have. Yet I felt no such inclination. I was happy in my mountains and saw no reason to leave them for any purpose. As I grew into myself, I became aware, through the use of the books my father brought from the library in town and the curriculum he purchased for my schooling, that my family was odd. I had no mother. Yet when I asked my father about my mother, he told me that I didn’t have one. That he had simply found me at the base of the ancient pine that stood by itself in the meadow and knew in an instant I was created to be his daughter.  
I was fascinated with the story and often found myself at the base of the pine wondering how I had come to be and if perhaps in some odd way it was the pine that created me. It was in this way that I found myself encountering the true first unusual thing in my strange life. I was sitting by the pine watching it with my usual intent gaze when I heard someone call my name, “Kanana.” The voice was a woman’s and it startled me, I had only ever heard my father’s voice and my own. This voice was strange and haunting and I wanted to follow it, yet even if I had been able to locate it I would have not have had the chance for as I went to pull myself up using the pine as my support I was startled by a flash of green light that came from where my hand had touched the tree. I pulled away startled, it had never done that before. At first, I thought I had imagined it, and if it had not been for what followed I still might be in doubt. Yet at that time I had no chance to test it, for I heard my father call me and ran to his side.  
The next day I left the cabin to do a little hunting with my bow. We needed meat and this was one area where I exceeded my father. I returned late in the evening with a brace of rabbits. Yet there was no home to come back to. The house had been burned to the ground and my father was gone. I initially hoped that he might have escaped the fire, but could see no trace of him in the nearby woods. Yet as I came near the ancient pine, I could hear my father calling me. I looked for him in vain and had quite tired myself when I came to lean against the tree, too tired to remember the strange events that had happened there the day before. Thus, you can imagine my fear when rather than finding a resting place on which to confide my weariness I instead found myself falling into the heart of the sturdy tree.  
How to describe what happened next? I know that I only I can, but I find myself incapable of doing so. Let us just say that Alice’s fall into the rabbit hole was not longer, and it was definitely better lit. It seemed as if all I could see was darkness behind me and darkness before me, and yet I fell without seeing any sign of a light. Until with a thud I landed at the bottom. For a few moments, I clawed my way in the darkness and then I noticed a light in the distance. I had no way of knowing if what was at the end of that light was good or bad. For all, I knew it could have been a monster preparing to roast me for his dinner. However, I had been in the dark for so long that any light was something worth going towards and like a moth I followed the light, never considering my fate when I reached it. Imagine my surprise then when as I grew closer, I saw, not a monster, but a beautiful woman, a goddess of great size and grandeur. She was smiling, but somehow it was not quite a nice smile. It lacked the warmth of any true emotion and instead seemed to be pasted there to fulfill a purpose of her own. I was so busy contemplating her I felt myself startle as she spoke, “You came to find the man you call father. This I know. But I will not help you until you help me, for I have need of you.” I fear my response was rather unladylike, “What the F****!” I answered indignantly, “He’s my dad, you can’t expect me to just desert him while I spend time helping you!” At this, her eyes burned and her smile disappeared. I have to admit, she almost scared me, but her words kept an even modulated tone eerie tone as she answered back without any threat in her voice, “You will do exactly as I say or you will never see that man again.” This would have been more bearable if it was a threat but delivered as it was it unnerved me and I answered chastened but surly, “What do you need?” She responded, “Go to the fire of Andrana and bring back for me the bird from its center. Then go to the ancient mountains of Nihil and bring me the horn you find there. And last go to the Statis and bring me a bottle of water from its pool of death. Then and only then will I help you find your father.”  
As she said these last words the darkness peeled away and I found myself beside a large fire. In the center, I could see the bird sitting on its nest whose wings seemed to feed the fire from some inner energy source. I could see no hope for it, I simply reached my hands into the fire and attempted to grab it. I’m sure you have guessed that this did not go too well. But as I reached in, I noticed her abandoned her nest for a moment to squawk. My hands were badly burned but I tried it again, this time thinking that I could shoot her with my bow as she arose if I were quick enough. I tried again, but my hands were so badly burned from my first attempt that I lacked the speed to loose an arrow, and thus the bird sat once more upon her nest. I had no aspirations to succeeding this time where I had failed before but for the last time, I stuck my hands into the fire and grabbed for the bird. This time she flew higher than before and it was with great pain as my scorched hands protested that I lost my arrow and shot at her. One burning feather fell to the ground with my arrow in it and then the fire disappeared leaving me faced with a bird that looked like a common hawk. Indeed for a few moments, I wondered if I had failed, but then I saw the intelligence in the bird’s eyes and he spoke to me. “Go to the river and wash,” She said gently. I obeyed her, something in me trusted him, I am not sure why perhaps it was something oddly familiar about his voice. I touched the river, which I am sure had not been there when I appeared, and my burns, the place of the fire, and the river melted away.  
I found myself on a mountain top where there was a wolf guarding a horn placed high in the cleft of the rock. The falcon I had obtained had come to sit on my shoulder and now appeared to be willing to help me as he said, “You distract the wolf, I will get the horn.” This was all the chance I had to prepare myself as the wolf sprang at me. I found myself beating it back with my bow, not the most conventional use of a bow, but it was effective. After several minutes I felt my bow snap under the force of a hard blow from the wolf. Yet to my great advantage it was at this moment that the falcon once more perched on my shoulder with the horn around his neck. He screamed in my ear “Blow the horn!” As I blew it the mountain, the boulder, and wolf faded way as if blown away by the force of my blow.  
This brought me to a fountain in which nothing was living and the water released a putrid smell that made me dizzy in its intensity. Here again, however, the falcon proved to be my friend. For he said, “Reach around my neck and take the bottle you find there.” I reached carefully into the thick feathers that surrounded his neck and found there a small bottle, barely the size of my pinky finger. When he saw I had obtained the bottle the falcon said, “Take the bottle to the fountain and fill it. I cannot help you, but if it becomes too much think of me and I will help you.” I began to move toward the water. My progress was slow because with each move that I made I could feel the poison that the water poured into the air seep into my lunges and I grew more and more dizzy and more and more weak. Yet each time I felt like I had nothing left I could hear the falcon shriek and that would remind me of my purpose. It was only a few feet to the fountain but it felt like twenty miles. When I finally reached the mountains, I had all I could do to not fall in, but with great difficulty, I filled the bottle. Then I felt the falcon on my shoulder and there was a half-familiar softness in his voice as he said, “It is done.”  
At those words, the goddess I had encountered when I first entered this world appeared before me and at her coming everything but the falcon, the horn, the bottle, and my trusty bow seemed to disappear. Only this time there was nothing to replace it, I was simply surrounded by nothingness on all sides. “You have done well girl,” the goddess said. “So well in fact that I will offer you what you want, I will accept you as my daughter and make you a queen.” I was confused for this is not what I had asked for all. “That is so not what I want!” I responded, “Where is my father?” She didn’t answer my question but said, “I will make you like myself so that you never die and never feel any pain.” I responded, “If I could never feel pain, I could never feel joy. Where is my father? You promised me my father!” She then said, “Give me the items you brought for me and I will lead you to my father.” This was what I had intended all along but as I went to hand the items to the goddess, I heard the falcon in my ear, “If you give her what she asks she will kill you. Do not give her the horn or me, but throw all but a few drops of the water of death upon her, it is the only way you will survive.” I had trusted the falcon throughout this journey and something about the grand woman in front of me left me uneasy. I decided to go with my gut and threw all but a few drops of the water of death upon her. She burst into flames and her screams were a mad cacophony that will haunt me till I die. She writhed and horrid smell of burning flesh permeated the air as within a few seconds my taskmaster was gone.  
As she died the world around me shifted and became filled with the sounds and the sights of an active and living wood. I stood in the middle in amazement drinking in the sudden change when I heard a voice in my ear. “Now throw the last few drops of the water of Nihil on me.” It was the voice of the falcon and as I spoke, he flew up to land upon my wrist. “What!” I screeched “I can’t do that! I already killed the lady; I cannot kill my friend too.” The falcon looked at me and there was a kind sadness in his eyes as he said: “Do you trust me.” “What” I responded. “Do you trust me,” he repeated, and then seeing the look on my face he said in a plaintive tone, “Kanana have I ever given you a reason not to trust me?” All I could do was to helplessly shake my head. Every time I had taken his advice on this odd journey fate had ordained for me; he had been right. If a falcon could smile, he did so then as he said with the warmth in her tone that the goddess had lacked, “Then trust me now and give me what I ask for.” It was with a heavy heart that I sprinkled the last few drops of the water of death upon him. I was prepared to see her covered in flames as I had the last person who had been in contact with this poisonous water. But rather than flames, a green light rose from the ground to cover him and in a moment, I was blessed with the beautiful sight of my own beloved father before.  
“Dad!” I shrieked and ran into his arms and he began to laugh a deep belly laugh while tears poured down his cheeks. “Kanaan!” He said through his tears. “I came home and the whole house was ransacked and you were nowhere to be seen and then this odd woman appeared and told me she was your mother. The next thing I know she enumerating her plan to test you. I’m not entirely sure why, and that was my last thought until I saw you by the fire that was my prison.” “She wasn’t my mom,” was all I had to say to this influx of knowledge. “She wasn’t my mom. If she was why would she put me in danger. I could have died getting the water of Nihil. What’s more, why did she leave me under the tree? Anyone could have taken me and possibly hurt me. That’s if the animals or elements didn’t hurt me first. I only have one parent, Dad, and that’s you. The man who raised me and has taught and given me everything. You’re my Dad and the only parent I have ever needed.” As I said those words a bright light encompassed us both and just as suddenly as transport seems to be in that odd world in which we had found ourselves my father and I found ourselves at the base of the ancient pine in the middle of the meadow. You may or may not chose to believe that this ever happened. If I read it in such a halting stumbling way, or indeed read it from the finest author on the face of this earth, I would not believe it. But what has happened is true and I can tell you that I have proof of that by the horn on my mantle. Now I avoid the old pine, it may seem like an odd thing to do, but I don’t need to remember the mother I killed. I only want to remember and honor the father that raised me.


End file.
